Kiessling eventually paid for a flu shot and said she would try to get her updated Covid-19 shot next week. The customer service representatives told her they were being besieged with calls but had little information to give people. Kiessling said she was told they didn’t have any plans to communicate with their members about the outage, either.ĬareFirst did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. When she called CareFirst, she said, she was told it was having a network-wide problem with billing for all vaccines. She decided to try talking to her insurance company. We’re getting flu shots this week, in theory, and Covid shots next week,” she said.īut when she went to the grocery store pharmacy where she’s gotten all her previous vaccines with little fuss, she was told she would have to pay out of pocket if she wanted her shot. Kiessling and her family are covered by CareFirst Blue Cross and Blue Shield through her husband’s employer. Koldo圜hris/Moment RF/Getty ImagesĬDC recommends updated Covid-19 vaccines for everyone 6 months and older African American female nurse or doctor injecting vaccine into caucasian blonde girl patient siiting on examination table in vaccination center. Young girl watching her being injected with COVID-19 vaccine at a medical clinic. Kira Kiessling, 38, of Washington DC, recently booked appointments for her flu and Covid-19 vaccines in anticipation of an upcoming business trip. “Now, what’s happened with commercialization is, we’re back to health care as we know it, and its challenges and its complexities,” she said. Rite Aid and Walmart said they had not begun scheduling vaccine appointments but expect to get their first shipments of the updated Covid-19 vaccines this week.ĭuring previous Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, when the government was in charge of buying, distributing and monitoring the vaccines, Kates says Americans got a taste of what universal health care could look like, and everyone had access. It expects to make more appointments available later this week. Walgreens described any problems as isolated and said it now has enough supply to honor existing vaccine appointments at most stores. It is also the case that insurers have known this was going to happen for quite a while.”ĬVS said it has had to reschedule some appointments as it receives vaccines on a rolling basis. There are things that have to be put in place, so it is temporary. “It is the first time they’re being commercialized. “All of this is temporary,” said Jen Kates, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation who is tracking vaccine access. Last year, most people who got a bivalent Covid-19 vaccine did so within the first two months of approval, according to CDC data. We’ve contacted the pharmacists, and we’re working with–and to make sure everyone understands how this works–you should not have to pay out of pocket if you are insured,” Becerra said, adding that there are also free vaccines for people who are not insured through the Bridge Access Program.įor the most part, the snafus seem to be short-term problems related to limited early supplies or trouble getting the correct codes set up to bill insurance, but experts say they were also avoidable issues that are slowing the momentum of the fall vaccine campaign at a critical juncture. “We’ve heard these stories, and we’ve contacted the insurers. On Wednesday, at a press event where he got his own Covid and Flu vaccines, Xavier Becerra, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said they were working to smooth any hiccups. The CDC directed questions about the problems to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Some people have booked appointments and gotten a shot already, but others who have tried to follow the CDC’s guidance have run into roadblocks that didn’t exist before the government commercialized the Covid-19 vaccines this year. Some pharmacies have scheduled vaccine appointments only to cancel them when they run out of doses. And people have arrived for their vaccine appointments expecting the cost to be fully covered by their insurance, only to be told that they have to pay out of pocket for the shot, which retails for between $100 and $200, with an administration fee. Meet the Black students who were instrumental in developing the first Covid-19 shots From left, Olubukola Abiona, Geoffrey Hutchinson and Cynthia Ziwawo pose at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta on September 13, 2023.
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